


Disconnect

by shieldivarius



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Angst, Depression, Gen, I have some feelings about the end of Kingdom Hearts 3, KH3 spoilers, PTSD, and they're not happy ones, post-kh3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-11-01 12:44:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17867513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shieldivarius/pseuds/shieldivarius
Summary: Look after them for me,he'd said.





	Disconnect

_“Terra, look after them for me,”_ the Master had said.

In the days, weeks, months following the final battle, that had been possible only because there’d been nothing to protect Ven and Aqua _from._ Nothing except his own sour mood as he drifted through the hallways of Land of Departure, more ghost than person, anyway.

Land of Departure, sealed away and hidden for ten years by its new Master, looked untouched, as though nothing had changed here since they were children being trained in the bosom of the last of the blue-blooded Masters. Untouched, as though it hadn’t been torn apart by Xehanort in those final days. Untouched, as though the last Master’s blood hadn’t been spilled by his eldest Apprentice in the courtyard out front.

Land of Departure looked as untouched as any of the three of them, on the surface. 

Underneath, though, underneath roiled the tensions that told the true story. Their training grounds had always been a world between, neither dark nor light, hidden so that they might protect the Order without disturbing it. Now, though, now it was a world out of time as well as out of alignment, and its inhabitants out of time alongside it, and that shift roiled uncertainty through the very foundations. 

Aqua’s power, her force of will as the new reigning Master, kept the world whole and together but she lacked the experience and surety Master Eraqus had had in droves. Her confidence would return in time—Terra _knew_ that, and it was unkind of him to think otherwise—but even then, Terra didn’t think Land of Departure would ever feel like _home_ again.

Displaced from time and homeless, did the others feel the same?

_“Terra, look after them for me,”_ the Master had said.

Had he _forgotten_? _Forgotten_ that Aqua was his successor, not Terra? That Terra had missed the Mark in that, as he had in so many other things since then? That if Terra had maybe, possibly, once been worthy of the Mark and the responsibilities that came with it, that he _certainly_ wasn’t now? 

But no, of course he hadn’t.

After all, his last will may have been to tell Terra to look after Aqua and Ven, to put on him some of the responsibility that he, Master Eraqus could no longer take on himself, certainly. But it hadn’t been to make Terra Master. 

Because Terra had never been worthy of that title. Not in the moments after he’d failed the Mark when he’d been outraged Master Eraqus had passed him over, and certainly not when he’d been hoodwinked and lured in by Xehanort’s calling him by it as though he’d earned it. If he had learned nothing else from that experience—and what had he learned? What could be taken from ten years of being forced to bow to Xehanort’s Will, to having none of his own, and only patches of memory to tell him how bad things had gotten?—it was that the alacrity with which he’d turned his back on Master Eraqus when he hadn’t gotten his way made him _less_ worthy of the Mark. Not more.

A proper Keyblade Master would never be wooed so easily from the Path of Light by the right words.

Terra laid his hand on the cool glass of the highest attic window and peered outside. This end of the castle overlooked the back of the landscape, not the front—he hadn’t walked through the courtyard since he’d returned and had no intention of starting—and far below him Ven knocked around the training rings alone. 

Well, not alone. The strange creature—Chirithy, it called itself—that had come home with them after the battle lurked nearby, speaking occasionally to Ven though its words were lost to the distance. Ven laughed, though, pausing in his forms so that the creature could bounce up into his arms for a hug.

He pulled back from the window, catching his reflection with a hint of a smile looking back at him before a soft noise behind him chased it away. 

“Terra?”

He didn’t turn to look at her, just made a noise in his throat to acknowledge her presence. 

_“Terra, look after them for me. Please.”_

He was doing a terrible job of it, judging by the tentative tone to her voice, like she thought he might shout at her, bite her head off for daring to come and find him. 

_“You’ll go astray again.”_ She’d said to him in the Graveyard, before they’d all been lost and it hadn’t mattered that her opinion of him had fallen so low. (He deserved it; he’d no doubt have proven her right.)

The Master should never have pretended to put Terra in charge of their wellbeing. She was so much better at holding onto the responsibility.

“I was going through some old boxes and I thought…”

“Hmm?” he prompted when she trailed off, like she thought he might have something better to do than listen to her when she’d climbed up seven flights of stairs and a forty-rung ladder to find him. His ‘something better’ amounted to chasing his scattered thoughts down paths he couldn’t help but travel.

“Well, there’s some stuff here, the Master’s old files. I… thought you might want to see them.”

Again, Terra didn’t turn. She’d been unearthing things since they’d returned, pushing him, nudging him. Suggesting without saying anything that he should go for the Mark again. Ask Yen Sid, perhaps, who had administered the King’s and Riku’s exams, who was _“Certainly more qualified than I am,”_ as she’d said once, pretending it was an appropriate comment in the context of a wholly different conversation.

Like he’d ask her. He _knew_ she was better than him. She’d _always_ been better than him. He didn’t need a mark of _pity._

“I’ll just leave them here for…” she trailed off, voice getting quieter as she withdrew until he couldn’t even make out the end of whatever she’d said.

_“Look after them for me.”_

It hadn’t been what Terra had wanted to hear. Hadn’t been what he had needed to hear. 

His reflection blurred, and he rubbed the back of his glove against burning eyes, knocked the edge of his gauntlet into his brow and flinched back. Too much to ask for an acknowledgement that maybe, somehow, it hadn’t all been Terra’s fault. Because of course he didn’t deserve it. The Master had given him a simple task, his second chance, and he’d blown it more surely than the first. 

_“Terra, look after them for me. Please.”_  

What good could he do?


End file.
